The Most Essential Social Media Statistics and Facts of 2019

The Most Essential Social Media Statistics and Facts of 2019

The Most Essential
(and Surprising) Social Media Statistics and Facts of 2019

As social media marketers, we do our best to be
data-informed with the decisions we make for our social media strategy at
Buffer. Social media stats make a difference. Plus, you never know when you’ll
need a good trivia tidbit to impress at a party.

In this post, we hope you’ll find it all: both the necessary
stats and facts to inform your social media decisions plus some social media
numbers that will surprise and entertain.

Keep reading to see the numbers on social media
demographics, usage, trends, and much more. We hope these statistics and facts
will arm you with the knowledge you need to build an even stronger social media
strategy.

Social media statistics and facts, overall

Our first grouping of social media statistics is very meta:
it’s about the state of social media itself. We thought we’d begin by taking a
bird’s eye view of the social media landscape before zooming into each social
network in particular. To begin with, check out these numbers for social media
usage worldwide:

Social media usage
worldwide:

The internet has 4.4 billion users

There are 3.499 billion active social media
users

For context, as of May 2019, total worldwide population is
7.7 billion. So that means that 57 percent of the world’s population is on the
internet. More people are online than those who aren’t online.

And as far as social media usage goes,

45 percent of the world is on social media

If you have the internet, there’s an 80 percent
chance you have a social media account, too.

Yes, and it gets even more mind-blowing.

On average, people have 7.6 social media
accounts apiece

The average daily time spent on social is 142
minutes a day

The most popular social networks

It’s interesting to know how many people – total – are on
social, but how about where these social media users spend their time. If you
want to play along, go ahead and think about the order of the top 10 social
networks with the most users. Keep in mind; these are total user counts, not
necessarily active users, which not all social networks reveal.

All these user numbers are the most recent ones we could
find online. Please do let us know in the comments if you’ve seen a more recent
statistic.

Facebook — 2.4 billion users

YouTube — 1.9 billion users

WhatsApp — 1.6 billion users

Instagram (tie) — 1 billion users

WeChat (tie) — 1 billion users

TikTok — 800 million users

LinkedIn — 610 million users

Reddit — 542 million users

Twitter — 330 million users

Pinterest — 265 million users

Next, we’ll drill down into some specific demographics of
these networks, starting with Facebook.

Facebook demographic statistics:

The gender split of Facebook users slightly favors women.
The exact breakdown is 54% women and 46% men. This ratio also appears when you
look at Facebook usage amongst internet users: 62% of all men who are online
have a Facebook account, while 72 percent of women who are online are also on
Facebook.

Among Nepal residents, here’s the breakdown of Facebook
usage by age:

51% of 13-17 year olds use Facebook

81% of 18-29 year olds use Facebook

78% of 30-49 year olds use Facebook

65% of 50-64 year olds use Facebook

41% of 65+ year olds use Facebook

And also among Nepal residents, here’s how Facebook usage
varies according to where you live.

75% of adults living in urban areas use Facebook

67% of adults living in suburban areas use
Facebook

58% of adults living in rural areas use Facebook

Instagram demographic statistics

Instagram tends to have some of the most highly-publicized
of statistics as their announcements about usage tend to make headlines. You’ve
probably heard some of the recent ones:

Instagram has 500 million daily active users

There are 400 million daily active users on
Instagram Stories alone

The biggest demographic group on Instagram is males between
18 and 24 years old. In fact, the 18-to-24 age group makes up 75% of all users
on Instagram.

According to Nepal figures,

64% of 18-29 year olds use Instagram

40% of 30-49 year olds use Instagram

21% of 50-64 year olds use Instagram

10% of 65+ year olds use Instagram

And here are the stats on location demographics. In Nepal,

42% of adults living in urban areas use
Instagram

34% of adults living in suburban areas use
Instagram

25% of adults living in rural areas use
Instagram

While the U.S. is the country that uses Instagram the most,
can you guess the rest of the top three? Number two is Brazil and number three
is India. Both have more than 60 million users.

Twitter demographic statistics

This is how Twitter ranks in terms of usage by age group:

32% of 13-17 year olds use Twitter

40% of 18-29 year olds use Twitter

27% of 30-49 year olds use Twitter

19% of 50-64 year olds use Twitter

8% of 65+ year olds use Twitter

It’s interesting to see how the ages skew younger on
Twitter, and those percentages are notable in contrast to Facebook and
Instagram, which have huge percentages.

LinkedIn demographic statistics

LinkedIn’s demographics have a couple interesting
differences from the social networks we’ve covered already. First, here are the
age demographics:

29% of 18-29 year olds use LinkedIn

33% of 30-49 year olds use LinkedIn

24% of 50-64 year olds use LinkedIn

9% of 65+ year olds use LinkedIn

Yes and where things get interesting is when looking at the
stats for education and income demographics.

In terms of education
demographics:

50% of adults who graduated college use LinkedIn

And similarly, with income,

45% of adults who make over $75,000 use LinkedIn

And, just for fun,

41% of millionaires use LinkedIn

Obviously these numbers are at the top of the charts for
social networks for these demographics, which makes sense with the career
emphasis that is placed on LinkedIn.

Pinterest demographic statistics

As many of you know, Pinterest is associated with a
majority-women audience. There’s lots of ways to look at the numbers behind
this. These stats from Pew tell a pretty good story:

In the U.S. 41% of women who are online use Pinterest. Meanwhile
16% of online men use Pinterest.

And in terms of age
breakdown:

34% of 18-29 year olds use Pinterest

34% of 30-49 year olds use Pinterest

26% of 50-64 year olds use Pinterest

16% of 65+ year olds use Pinterest

A couple of bonus stats we love about Pinterest is how well
the platform ties into shopping. Over 175 billion items have been pinned on
Pinterest, and nearly two in three pinners — 61% — have made a purchase after
seeing something they like on Pinterest.

Snapchat demographic statistics

And many of you know the demographics that are most commonly
associated with Snapchat. As the numbers tell it, Snapchat’s audience is young.

69% of 13-17 year olds use Snapchat

68% of 18-29 year olds use Snapchat

The numbers fall off a cliff after that point.

26% of 30-49 year olds use Snapchat,

10% of 50-64 year olds use Snapchat,

3% of 65+ year olds use Snapchat.

5 surprising social media statistics and facts

80% of brands are under the impression that they
are doing social media customer service exceptionally well. Only 8% of their
customers agree.

90 percent of Instagram users are younger than
35.

(This is a good reminder that Snapchat and
TikTok and other “young” social networks aren’t the only places that younger
demographics spend their time.)

Today, more pictures are taken every two minutes
than were taken during the entire 1800s.

On WordPress alone — which is the software we
use to run our Buffer blogs — 70 million blog posts are published every month.

(Not exactly social-media-related, but wow,
that’s a lot of content to be shared!)

U.S. adults spend an average of 1 hour and 16
minutes each day watching video on digital devices. And this includes a
majority of the population: 78% of people watch online videos every week, and
55% watch every. day.